This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
158
THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND
CH.

methods will have a powerful influence towards promoting our ultimate purpose of a peaceful and free Christendom. Undoubtedly. But further, will they be adequate by themselves actually to guarantee and secure such a consummation? No.

A very little thought will demonstrate that neither our entry into the balance of Europe, nor our settlements with individual powers, nor our reorganisation of our navy and an expeditionary force, nor our support of the Concert of Europe, nor our cultivation of international arbitraments, are more than highly laudable and very important palliatives against the seizures and paroxysms to which Europe has been subject for fifteen centuries. Enough surely to remember that, though all these expedients of ours are in operation at this moment, our western barbarism, though modified, is still itself. War, in the Miltonic phrase, is still "in procinct." As the Prime Minister, recently speaking of armaments, has said: "We have tried to get other nations to hold their hand. But they will not; they are not in the mood for it." Therefore, we must look farther into the future, asking ourselves whether the resources of England are indeed exhausted with this catalogue, and whether we cannot shoulder some other more effective accoutrement drawn from the armoury of the coming time. To understand how this is possible, we must extend our vision beyond the boundaries of Europe itself.

During the vast span of the last five